American Bridge monitors what Republicans say and fights back when their rhetoric doesn't match their records. Help us hold the GOP accountable!

Tag: Iran

On the heels of President Obama’s tough, well-received speech to AIPAC this past weekend, leading GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is out with a butch new op-ed that continues his self-reinvention as a foreign policy Chuck Norris. However, progressive SuperPAC American Bridge has released a web video to remind Americans that, just like his declaration that “any president” would have greenlit the Osama bin Laden raid, the Mitt Romney of 2007 clucked a different tune.

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In advance of Mitt Romney’s speech to AIPAC today, we’re releasing a video flashback to 2007 when he came under fire for saying the first thing he’d do is “sit down with [his] attorneys” when deciding whether to order a military strike against Iran. Take a look.

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During his presidential campaign in 2007, Republican candidate Mitt Romney promised that a trust overseeing his financial portfolio would shed any investments that conflicted with GOP positions toward Iran, China, stem cell research and other issues. But Romney’s family trusts kept some of those stocks and repeatedly bought new investments in similar holdings as recently as 2010, when they were sold in advance of his latest White House campaign, a detailed review of Romney’s financial records by The Associated Press shows.

Recently disclosed 2010 tax returns for three family trust funds for Romney, his wife, Ann, and their adult children show scores of trades in such investments, worth more than $3 million when the holdings were all sold in 2010.

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In 2007, as Romney prepared his first run for president, Malt sold stock in dozens of potentially controversial companies, including casino operators, tobacco growers, and firms with ties to Iran. Last year, after Romney pushed for tougher trade sanctions against China, Malt dumped a number of Chinese holdings. He recently shed a money market mutual fund that had invested in government-backed mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are blamed for exacerbating the housing bust.

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“Texas Gov. Rick Perry railsagainst Iran’s “extremist, repressive ideology.” He condemnsany company who does business with “a terrorist state like Iran” for aiding a country that wants to kill American troops. And as governor he told his state’s biggest investment funds to divest from all companies with Iran ties; continuing such investments, he explained, was “investing in terrorism.”

But now Perry, a top contender for the GOP presidential nomination, has an Iran problem: One of his most high-profile donors, Koch Industries, for years did business with Iran, helping to grow the Iranian energy industry. Which means that at the same time he was slamming companies profiting off of business with Iran, Perry was pocketing campaign cash from a company doing just that. In light of the Koch-Iran revelations, the left-leaning outside spending group American Bridge is demanding Perry give back his Koch money. “If [Perry] does not immediately return all of the Koch’s Iran-tainted money and repudiate their actions, he has no business running to be the leader of the free world,” says Rodell Mollineau, president of American Bridge, which compiled research on Perry’s Iran comments and past campaign donations…”

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A trail goof for Pawlenty, who fielded a question on Iran policy with an answer on Iraq policy in a video sent over by the new Democratic group American Bridge, in what seems to be its first tracking hit: